Journal One

A lot of high schools back home, not including mine, are only required to write one research paper throughout the four years of mandatory English classes. My high school was different because it required a research paper every year, totaling up to at least four research papers. Still, however, I consider research papers one of my weaknesses in writing. Something about taking scientific research, sometimes even statistics, and smoothly incorporating it into a well written paper is very challenging to me. Another weakness I have is writing essays and papers in a given time limit. I like to have time to look over, edit, and re-edit my work before confidently handing it in. I’ve noticed that through high school and middle school I haven’t done as well on timed writing assignments than I have on assignments that have given me more time to read through it. This is something that’s hard to work on to fix, but I feel that if I can stronger my sentences the first time I write them I won’t have to go back to edit as many times, making the proofreading time shorter and, naturally, making the overall time for the paper shorter. As a writer I’d like to improve on converting facts and information collected from research to a well written, smoothly incorporated research paper. I think once my transitions improve, my papers overall will be better written. In order to make my transitions more cohesive in my writing, I need to learn the proper place to insert a quote or fact, where to cite it, and then the proper amount of explanation afterword. On the other hand, one of my strengths as a writer has turned out to be persuasive writing. In the past I’ve been particularly strong in this area because of a lot of practice with standardized tests. For as long as I can remember, a persuasive essay has been on the standardized test every year I was required to take one, so I feel that I’ve had adequate practice in persuasive writing. Another strength I have as a writer is organization. I try to keep my thoughts together, and then move onto another once the first one is complete. Organization used to be a much larger problem for me, but through high school I wrote a lot of essays and papers, and it has gotten much better. I think this course will help me improve as a writer because I’ll learn how to “clean up” my papers. Sometimes I feel like my writing can seem choppy, so I think by learning how to make my writing more cohesive I’ll be a better writer and rhetor.

As a writer I’ve been inspired by many things. When the song” Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield came out, one lyric stood out to me. In the song she says, “The rest is still unwritten”. This seems corny in the context as a writer, but I think about how if my life was a story I’ve writing since birth, the rest is really unwritten. I can’t predict the future, the end of the story, and I don’t know where it’ll lead me. My life is an unwritten story that will take time to finish. Another inspiration I’ve had is through J.K. Rowling. Although I’ve never read Harry Potter, I’m inspired by J.K. Rowling because she’s a successful writer. She started in a coffee shop with ordinary people, and has now made herself one of the most distinguished female writers ever. I admire her hard work and dedication to her passion, and her success has inspired me to become a better writer myself.